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Strange but true

1. New parents are bastardising classic names by making up their own spelling, according to new research into the most popular children's names for 2018. Liyam, Roze and Maizie are just some of the more adventurous spellings of traditional names that are creeping on to birth certificates.

2. Butchers in France have recently asked police to better protect them and their shops against vegan activists. In April, seven butcher shops in Hauts-de-France were sprinkled with fake blood, and a butcher shop and a fish shop had their windows broken and their facades vandalised with the spray-painted inscription "stop to speciesism". The letter blames the media, for "over-hyping" the meat-free lifestyle.

3. The official divorce complaint of Mary Louise Bell, wife of world-famous physicist Richard Feynman, was that "He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night."

A lost social convention

My father, born in 1948, once told me how his grandparents, born in the late 1800s, used to talk. He explained that it was common to talk about someone in the room as if they weren't in the room in order to compliment them. "Boy, Linda, that Greg sure is a great guy. Did you know he helped his mother-in-law paint her barn? I just think that's great." Meanwhile Greg is beaming on while drinking his tea watching the exchange. (Via Reddit)

News nostalgia

October 1992: Evans Mortuary played hardball. When a customer didn't make full payment, they simply returned the body, right to the customer's doorstep. More details here, including these lines: "I called the police, and they said, 'How do you know it's your father?'" said 37-year-old Larry Bojarski. "And I told them, 'I see his face. I know what he looks like!' What am I supposed to do with the body? He's my father." And from the mortician: "Who says I dumped him there? I left him there," mortician Newell Evans said. When told other funeral homes considered it unethical, he replied, "They can run their establishments as they see fit, and I will run mine my way." The mortician was charged with abuse of a corpse, but eventually acquitted. (Weird Universe)